‘Gilmore Girls’ Kelly Bishop Shares Abortion Story for the 1st Time

Bishop told People she always knew she didn't want kids: “I remember my mother even reminded me [when I was an adult], ‘You were a little girl when you said 'I'm not going to have children.'”

By Kylie Cheung | September 12, 2024 | 11:43am

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‘Gilmore Girls’ Kelly Bishop Shares Abortion Story for the 1st Time

Kelly Bishop may be well-known for her role as matriarch Emily Gilmore in the beloved seven-season family drama, Gilmore Girls, but in real life, she has no biological children—an outcome she always knew she wanted, even as a child. “I remember my mother even reminded me [when I was an adult], ‘You were a little girl when you said … I’m not going to have children,’” Bishop told People this week, ahead of the release of her new memoir, The Third Gilmore Girl.

Speaking to People, Bishop shared that in her forthcoming book, she tells the story of her abortion for the first time. “That’s something private that I just was not going to put in until the Supreme Court got rid of Roe v. Wade,” Bishop said of the abortion she had in her thirties. “And more and more women—actresses, but other celebrity-type women—were coming out of my generation, saying, ‘I had an abortion. I had an abortion.’”

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“It was such a relief just knowing that that option was there,” Bishop recounted. “Of course, it never had occurred to me that I would accidentally get pregnant. That never even crossed my mind. But the fact that that was available and legal, it was just a relief.”

The actress said she wasn’t planning on sharing this part of her life not because of “any feeling of shame and wrongdoing,” but simply as a matter of privacy. “I just wanted to include it so that young women of today get a sense of where we were then,” she explained. To Bishop’s point, the reversal of Roe built on the dismal trajectory for young people’s reproductive rights in recent years. In 2017, one study by the Population Reference Bureau showed worsened maternal health outcomes for millennial women than their mothers, citing growing barriers to reproductive health care.

Bishop fondly recalled attending a 2004 abortion rights rally with Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and producer Helen Pai. She told People she’s never really seen herself as “political,” but her lived experiences have galvanized her amid the escalating war on reproductive rights.

People across the political spectrum—including those who do and don’t identify as “political”—have abortions because abortion is a fact of life. And as more and more public-facing individuals, from Kerry Washington and Uma Thurman to Leslie Jones and, now, Kelly Bishop, share their stories without fear and shame, this lessens the stigma and misconceptions that abortion is rare and shameful.